The Culture of Efficiency Technology in Everyday Life Edited by Sharon Kleinman Peter Lang Publishing The Culture of Efficiency: Technology in Everyday Life explores the ways that people are managing, exploiting, and resisting technological advancements in the digital age. This unique volume offers a reader-friendly mix of theoretical and empirical chapters that provide insights about social and technological trends that will be valuable for students, researchers, and professionals. The contributing authors are distinguished experts from a range of fields, including: communication, sociology, psychology, computer science, business, cultural studies, healthcare, education, history, urban studies, disability studies, and environmental studies. The essays in this collection examine what it means to live in a culture that emphasizes efficiency, multitasking, and operating in real time, and what it means to live during an era in which we quantify activities down to the nanosecond—a billionth of a second. Chapters explore how the latest technologies are altering nitty-gritty aspects of everyday life, reveal how people are multitasking in a burgeoning array of contexts, and assess the benefits and implications of various tools—especially information and communication technologies—through the analytic lenses of social science, history, and business. This book provides fresh analyses of contemporary social and technological trends, practical suggestions for enhancing everyday life, and forecasts about the future of work and leisure. Keywords: Digital culture, technology and society, information and communication technologies (ICTs), sociology of work, diffusion of innovations, convergence culture, labor studies, multitasking, mobile communication, mobility, social presence, networked technologies, time—social aspects, time—psychological aspects, time—history of, computer mediated communication, computer supported cooperative work, globalization, leisure studies, simplicity, new media, media studies, American studies.